Need a good pistol smith

L

Larry in VA

Guest
I have a friend who comes from a long line of police officers. His whole family and extended family seem to be all police officers. He is not, but now his son has become an police officer in a neighboring county.
My quandary is this; my friend has an old pistol that was his Dads deep cover piece and it is in pretty bad shape. Definitely unsafe to fire! Won’t index cylinder properly is the main fault along with other faults. It appears to have been a pretty cheap pistol when purchased and the story behind it; (per my friend) it was fairly abused in its use. Beside used to subdue perps it was used to knock on doors, break things (glass, heads & whatever).
Personally I don’t think the gun is worth fixing but my friend really wants to give it to his son in usable (if not new) condition for sentimental reasons.

Any help finding a decent pistol smith who really knows his way around obscure type revolvers will be much appreciated.

Oh yeah! Gun has no markings as to who made it or model number/name. It is/was nickel plated.

TIA guys.
Larry
 
A revolver like that, is a liability to...........

the owner/possessor. First, I really wouldn't worry about it. Why? The department probably won't let him use it because: 1) Not "standard issue" (liability in court should something go wrong). 2) Unsafe for the officer. One of the S&W Scandium guns(if allowed) is VERY good; Light, carried lots, fired little. I have a friend who has two, both N-frames, but one, a 325PD(.45ACP) has about 10,000 rds of 200 gr SWC handloads through it, w/no visible ill effects. He totally blew away :D the S&W Rep when he told him this, the Rep said he'd NEVER heard of such a thing, and didn't think it was possible.( my friend goes to the range ALmost every weekend, and his range bag weighs, like 54 Lbs.!!) The BIGGEST problem w/less well-known guns like that is parts procurement, and if you can't easily get the parts, most smiths won't make the part, not because they can't, because the owner doesn't want to pay for the work. If it doesn't have any names on it, someone isn't proud of their product; even those old "store-brand" shotguns "Long-Tom Special", etc., the store that sold them didn't even have THEIR name on them(guilt by association?). I'd forget it.
 
Brian:
Thanks for your reply. I felt fairly certian I would get replies like yours all I have to do now is convince my buddy, pretty much already tried to convince him of this. If I could get more replies like this to show him it may make it easier to convince him. It will definitly be a let down for him I know.
Thanks for your reply...
Regards, Larry
 
being an unmarked lowgrade/junk gun, its most likely not worth spending a cent on. if it were a quality made pistol, i would recommend Don Williams of the action works as he's one of the best in the business. quite honestly any self respecting pistolsmith wont waste his time on a piece such as you describe, so if you find someone willing to fix it, he's probably not the guy you want working on your guns anyway.
 
Just my opinion but I would think it would have more sentimental value "as is."

I am SO with this guy! :)

In fact, "refinishing" or "refurbishing" something that's gotten hammered in the line of duty kinda' seems like "restoring" a classic race car by scraping all the numbers off and returning it to stock...... using Imron paint.

al
 
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